PRIMORDIALS

Prologue

"In between the ethereal and corporeal it resides. In between your waking dreams and those of slumber, it may find you. There is no place of protection. There is no magic to ward it away. It touches all of you, precisely and delicately to its advantage. This is the way of the Dark."

-- Primordial scroll V, verse III

Centuries ago, the Dark invaded the small town of Yadûr as it slept in the dead of night. Men, women and children alike, tossed in their linen sheets as unpleasant dreams sent from the Dark subdued them.

An owl screeched in the distance as its cavalry crept in; a vast grey noxious fume seeping out of the neighboring forest. Usually plentiful in game and resources, the forest was now thick with effluvium. It scorched the lungs and killed off creatures, big or small, who breathed it in. It sparkled under the starlit sky as it wilted the grass beneath its path. Cascading through the town's crops of wheat and barley, it left behind a trail of decay.

Eventually, the smog tumbled between two factories, locked for the night, where clothes and blankets were made. It crept further and further into town.

 Yadûr, positioned in the middle of Valterra, contained the only trading post of its kind. With a bakery, distillery, smelter and forge, farmers and miners from all over the land traveled there to sell their wares. The town prospered and trading routes evolved.

The vapor did not care. It separated, scattered, pushed up against the brick homes housing the  workers and their families. All of them slumbered still, unaware of what crept silently outside. It searched and climbed until it found ways to exude. Opened windows, chimneys, unsealed doors, it bled into every home, every building, searching for its human prey.

One such mist found a mouse hole at the base of a house and followed it through a series of walls until it came out and into a closet full of boots, cloaks and an old chest with brass locks. It seeped under the closet door and into a room where a man slept. He was a blacksmith. He had no wife or child yet, but he had eyes for the town's baker. He was a good man, a kind man. It did not care.

The grey toxin ruthlessly entered his mouth, ears, and nose. It burned his lungs and suffocated him while he woke, unable to breathe or to hear, terrified. As the mist doubled back and left his body, it thickened, became solid and morphed into a draug.

Its body bubbled as it took the human shape of who it once was, a male warrior. Dead skin developed over dead muscle and bone; grey, weathered, torn and rotten. Clad in steel armor with ornate jade, a cuirass, gauntlets, helmet, boots, it hunkered from the low ceiling. His white eyes appeared clouded over, seemingly blind. Though he had no need to see, he saw. His hair strung down wet against his scarred face, bearded in white. His skeggox, a magical ax spelled to never miss in battle, hung secured down his back.

He watched as the blacksmith, laying on his bed, took his last breath before taking the skeggox from his back and hacking off the dead man's limbs. The draug picked up one of the arms that dropped to the floor and brought it up to his mouth, ripping off a hunk of flesh with his teeth.

So began his feast.

Other warrior draugar entered the room, looking for more flesh to devour. There was plenty to go around.

They were all successful. Every home they entered, not a single scream pierced the night.

When their meal was complete, they gradually evaporated, feet first, back to their toxic form and traveled deep into the cover of the forest, away from the coming dawn.

By morning there was nothing to be found of the people in Yadûr but torn clothes and gnawed bones.

It was a targeted hit from the Dark. Trading between the High Cities would be halted, communities would be on their own, armies would go unfed.

This marked the first of many nights to follow. The Shattering had begun. Soon, all of Valterra would succumb to their torment and become a feast for the dead.